CAT-SCREEN

The CAT-SCREEN software is a computer-assisted instrument to assess Health-Related Quality of Life in children and adolescents

Unfortunately, the support of the CAT-SCREEN had to be discontinued due to lack of resources. Here you can find a documentation of the CAT-SCREEN, for latest developments please check the Child Public Health website.

The CAT-SCREEN is the computer-based version of the KINDL^R  (Ravens-Sieberer & Bullinger, 1998). The CAT-SCREEN is an economic instrument (including only the KINDL^R items) which is additionally child-friendly (independent of reading and writing skills, and presented in a playful format) and adapted to the particular stage of development (two age-versions of the KINDL^R are included).

The CAT-SCREEN is suitable for children aged 6 to 12 years and for adolescents aged 13 to 17 years.

According to the KINDL^R, the 24 items of the CAT-SCREEN cover 6 dimensions of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL): Physical well-being, Emotional well-being, Self-esteem, Family, Friends, and Everyday functioning (school).  The CAT-SCREEN includes two language versions (German and English) and two age-versions assessing self-reported HRQoL of children aged 6 to 12 years as well as adolescents aged 13 to 16 years. If the child has a long-term illness or is actually in hospital, an additional module assesses 6 items. The CAT-SCREEN presents questions visually as well as acoustically animated by cartoon characters. To distinguish the different dimensions in a child-friendly way, the procedure of item presentation in the CAT-SCREEN is interspersed with short cartoon sequences.

During data assessment by means of the CAT-SCREEN, children and adolescents are asked to answer by choosing the specific response that fits best to their own personal experiences. Questions and instructions are straightforward and easy to understand. Necessary instructions are included, thus a supervisor does not need to be continuously present.

Completion time varies between 10 and 20 minutes depending on age.
The opening screen of the program shows the cat “Lilli” and the dog “Tom”. All questions are answered by clicking the appropriate response (touch screen monitor). The questions are presented on the screen and played as sound files. It is always possible to return to the previous question. All questions have to be answered before starting the analyses.

Profile
After data assessment the CAT-SCREEN program displays a profile with higher value indicating better Health-Related Quality of Life. The profile can be chosen using the option “analysis” which contains:

socio-demographic data (name, sex, age), details of the interview (file, data, time), responses to the individual questions in the form of a tabular profile with reference scores, and a diagram presenting the scores on the dimensions of Health-Related Quality of Life. Provided reference values were calculated based on a sample of healthy school children in Hamburg (n = 1501) and a sample of chronically ill children (n = 1050).
The use of the profile offers the following advantages: an immediate report on the answers and a direct comparison of data assessed at two or more time points are possible. Data are automatically saved for further statistical calculations.

Interpretation and reference values
Calculated scale scores represent a quantification of Health-related Quality of Life for the respondents.  For the interpretation of scale scores, reference data can be taken into consideration.